If you're thinking about hosting Blawg Review on your law blog, you might like an overview of how this works before getting involved.

Maybe you've been following the blog carnivals over the past couple of years. Some blog carnivals have been very successful, and now, at BlogCarnival.com, you can see how the genre has grown to reflect the diversity of the Internet.

But what about Blawg Review, specifically? For those whose posts are reviewed, it's an opportunity to get seen and linked by other legal bloggers. For the hosts, it's an opportunity to gain exposure to the audience of regular readers of Blawg Review. Many will be motivated to participate just because it's a good way to help others, who might be new to law blogging, to get discovered and find a wider audience for their blawgs.

There are only two standards we ask Blawg Review hosts to maintain:

1. The title of the Blawg Review in each host blawg shall be simply: Blawg Review #[insert consecutive issue number].

2. At the end of each hosted review there shall be a sentence that reads: Blawg Review has information about next week's host, and instructions how to get your blawg posts reviewed in upcoming issues.

Between those standard requirements, each host is free to organize and present the Blawg Review, without restrictions on personal creativity. That said, personal creativity does not include license to reinvent this wheel, or to experiment with a different day of the week to publish Blawg Review, or to split the Blawg Review into chapters or parts published beyond the date scheduled for the host. It is the concept of Blawg Review, within reason, to be inclusive of all posts submitted for review in the week prior to each issue.

To participate as a host, just provide us with the host blawg URL and an active email address where you will receive Blawg Review submissions. We never publish your email address, but forward all submissions through Blawg Review's email to your inbox during the week prior to your hosting date. If this is not your regular email address, it might be helpful to provide another confidential email address where you would like to receive a reminder of your hosting commitment sometime in advance.

Blaw Review will be published on a different law blog every Monday, commencing April 11, 2005 at Evan Schaeffer's Legal Underground, who starts with a traditional blog carnival format, as an example.

If you'd like to host an upcoming Blawg Review on your law blog, just let us know the Date Available that you would prefer to host, by sending an email addressed to:

host at blawg review dot com

We'll get right back to you.

Okay, those are the basics, all you need to help you decide whether you're up for the challenge of hosting Blawg Review.

If you have any questions or concerns about hosting Blawg Review, or want clarification of anything to help you prepare to host, please don't hesitate to send us an email. We're here to help.

Law Professor Glenn Reynolds, the Instapundit, adds this helpful advice and we encourage every host to send a nice friendly email to pundit@instapundit.com so he knows your Blawg Review is posted.

UPDATE: 02/02/06

Unlike most other blog carnivals, which rely only on submissions, Blawg Review collects the best of the law blogs each week from various sources, including the recommendations of readers of law blogs.

A peer-reviewed blog carnival, the host of each Blawg Review decides which of the submissions and recommended posts are suitable for inclusion in the presentation. The host is encouraged to source another dozen or so interesting posts to fit with any special theme of that issue of Blawg Review.

The host's personal selections usually include several that reflect the character and subject interests of the host blawg, recognizing that the regular readership of the blog should find some of the usual content, and new readers of the blog via Blawg Review ought to get some sense of the unique perspective and subject specialties of the host.

To these recommendations and selections are added most of those posts submitted by law bloggers on their own behalf. It's the essence of a blog carnival that it provides a forum for bloggers to submit their own posts that they think meet the standards and subject interests of that carnvial, and the character and interests of the anticipated host, so we encourage hosts to err on the side of accepting those submissions and to discuss any controversial submissions with the the Editor if there is any question. In the end, the host has the final cut, as it is the host's blog publication.

Blawg Review benefits from the widest possible participation and relies on submissions and recommendations from all law bloggers, and many of our previous hosts continue to be our strongest contributors.